Let’s say bring the book with you, the spiderweb photo album, the last rock of Turkish candy dissolving in your throat while the sun hides behind your complicated torso.
No one has to know.
Pack the travel guide for Iceland and Italy, your most remarkable shoes, your notecards of love’s embellishments, your compromised iPhone, queue of films to see in the event of a falling out, shows to binge, items to purchase on Amazon.
Wave at the neighbor while letting the dog out, prune the syringa that survived five heat waves, studly the striped Monarch caterpillars chomping at milkweed poisonous to predators.
The bucket list, vertical—your happy list horizontal.
On the refrigerator, in the borrowed car with broken windows, in your head before your ducks are dead, in your wallet with your new debit card in your left back jeans’ pocket.
In your good ear, your collapsed lung, in your ribcage, stomach plummet, litany for possible wingspans.
Someone is watching you.
You should sing the grocery list, memorize the steps down the winding staircase to nowhere certain–nowhere in particular.